About Skies and Red Eyes
by Scarlet-Gale
Summary: It was a rather annoying task, the one to understand Ryuuji's endless chats about colors. Since only one truly mattered to Isa.


**Name:** About Skies and Red Eyes

**Author:** ScarletGale

**Fandom:** Hatoful Boyfriend

**Pairing:** Ryuuji/Isa

**Disclaimer: **_Moa is the Goddess who created this awesome game. Go worship her right now._

**N/A:** In which she sucks at proper english but tries anyway. The idea was Shin's, and honestly it was cuter on my mind. But I don't think that Shuu fits with cute situations, even at his time as Isa. After all, he's Fat Bird... (shrugs)

.

* * *

.

He would study the other silently for a moment, like he was pondering about the best way to propose whatever he was thinking at the moment. Whatever it could be, he would always call out his name with that overly cheerful tone. Isa wouldn't really want to; he would rather stay at the laboratory the whole day. But Ryuuji with his unflappable smile would say that such place wasn't good enough. He would take Isa's hand and bring him out anyway. Isa wouldn't find any logical explanation for his senior co-worker's actions or words, but in the end wouldn't object about being dragged out of his workplace.

Ryuuji would sit down in the grass at the laboratory's surroundings and Isa would look at that with wordless disapproval, thinking about why he would do that with the same white coat he used use at his workplace. But in the end he also wouldn't object when Ryuuji would pull his sleeve for him to sit down with the senior in the grass (though he would first take off his white coat).

Ryuuji would then look at whatever he would explain today. This day, it was the evening sky. And Isa would always look at whatever Ryuuji would explain today as well.

And then the older one would point at it.

"The sky's so beautiful now, Isa," he would say.

"It's like a really big canvas that someone just painted over with a big brush. But the artist was kind of lazy, maybe, 'cause I still can see some blue… this bright part of the sky, you _see_? It's the same blue of this morning."

Isa would simply nod.

One day Ryuuji simply discovered about his impairment. Isa would do anything to avoid being target of any sympathy for that. He would do anything to hide his defective vision and side. But it just happened. Looking back at that day, he wouldn't even remember exactly how that even happened. It was as mysterious as that man himself.

Since then, Kawara would try to explain about colors, about how he saw the world. Isa would find that unnecessary. And Ryuuji wouldn't care.

"It's just so blue that, compared with all the other colors there, it's just like white. Can you see it? It's just like a real canvas."

Isa would stay silent for a moment, indeed trying to imagine such bright blue.

And would look at Ryuuji after some moments thinking that no, he wouldn't ever be able to imagine a blue as bright and blue as that one. His memories of when he could see colors were as washed out and diffuse as they were now.

But it really didn't matter at all in the end, because Ryuuji would be glad to explain about those things over and over again.

The thing was, Isa also knew that.

"Yes. I can _see_ it, sir," he would answer even if he didn't, because he wouldn't want to go through that situation were his senior spent a whole afternoon trying to make Isa understand about the color of a flower ever again.

And because Ryuuji didn't liked it when his younger co-worker was dead silent. A simple 'yes' or 'no' would go a long way with him, but it had to be something.

"And then… I think this artist was very skilled, because there isn't just that purple that comes before the night. This evening has so many colors, Isa!"

And Ryuuji would open his hands in a gesture that Isa knew very well. That gesture that his senior would do when he explained something with all his heart.

"The purple of the clouds is very washed out at the ends, almost gray. And then at the center it's really purple, like really strong, almost like the color of a bruise," and then he would smile softly. "I used to hurt myself a lot when I was little, falling from trees or from my bicycle. This purple is really like that one from my bruises back there. My mom would always hate when I hurt myself. Do you even hurt yourself like that, Isa?"

And then, the memories of an explosion and the last color he ever saw before his world became gray forever.

White. Pure and unadulterated white.

And then, black.

But Isa wouldn't flinch with the memories. He could care less about them.

And that's why he wouldn't be able to truly understand that purple. Never.

But even so, somehow, he could understand that Ryuuji was trying. He could understand his words.

"Yes," he would answer. And he wasn't lying at all. But he couldn't say it was on a bicycle, even because he didn't had any memory of ever had one in his life.

"Is that so? When it was that?"

"When I was a child," he would say, without any other details.

An explosion of white – the white that was all the colors concentrated in one – took with it his ability and any chance of riding a bicycle ever again anyway.

"Ehh…"

Ryuuji wouldn't insist on details, and sometimes Isa couldn't help but wonder until where his senior co-worker was observant and until where he was just… _Kawara_.

But he wouldn't never really dwell on these thoughts, because Ryuuji would be always fast on pulling the younger one back to that world full of collors.

"But then, there are these golden spots at some points of the clouds, especially at their end. The contrast is really beautiful, you know… you can't really tell where it starts the purple and where it ends the yellow. They're really mixed, it's very pretty. And then, there's that part very next to the sun, look," he would point at that spot where the clouds would seem just like the shape of a pie at the sky. "That part right there is so full of yellow as well. It blends itself with the blue and all, but it didn't become green, you know? It's just so bright that it seems almost like white."

Isa wouldn't understand, of course. Blue and yellow that didn't became green. He wouldn't understand such a thing at all.

But Ryuuji would never care about that complete illogical thing.

"And this isn't even the best part, Isa! Then, this artist wasn't satisfied with his work and added yet another color," he smiled and did again that gesture with his hands. "He added pink to the purple clouds. Can you see it, at that part next to the setting sun? The clouds are completely pink! It's a very pretty pink… it's like the purple were mixed with white and then it resulted in this color… and you know. It reminds me of something. Do you want to know what is it?"

'_No_', he would want to say at first.

But then he would look at Ryuuji's eyes.

Such bright eyes.

Such red eyes.

And his answer would change for, "What, sir?"

And Ryuuji would be silent, for a change.

A very unusual behavior.

"You can't laugh, 'kay?"

Isa would just wait, of course. He knew that Kawara would just say it sooner or later regardless of his answer. The senior just trusted him that much.

Isa found so easy to explain all the mysteries of the world, but that one baffled him to no end. The mystery that was Ryuuji Kawara.

"It reminds me of Ryouta's fingers."

Like if he was a machine, Isa said to himself in his head that information that seemed almost schoolbook-like, "_Ryouta Kawara. Son of Ryuuji Kawara and his wife._"

_Son of Ryuuji Kawara._

"It's a really adorable pink. You know? He was all pink when he born. It was almost like he was feverish, you know? And he had those really gross-looking white things that…"

"That is a really common feature of babies with less than 37 weeks, sir," Isa would say in a bored voice and with a deadpan expression. "It is called _Vernix caseosa_, and it is made to protect the baby's skin from the amniotic fluid."

Ryuuji made a face.

"Wha– you're so smart, Isa," he said, his expression back to normal in a heartbeat. Any disgust with that information was forever erased, he noticed.

"It's general knowledge, sir," he would reply.

And Ryuuji would make an, "Oh…"

And so they would be in silence, until Ryuuji doing another '_Oh…_' sound, this time a hint of alarm in his voice. "I still didn't describe to you the sun's color, Isa!"

"Indeed," Isa would reply, already waiting for that.

Ryuuji would then look at the setting sun with such a concentration that Isa could almost hear his brain in all that thinking process of how to describe what he was seeing.

And against all his reservations, Isa would appreciate much more Ryuuji's silence. That explained him much more about the world than any word.

"It's just pretty," he would simply say.

"It's golden. It's like all the yellows of the world are right there. And then there's that hint of black thanks to the clouds. It makes the whole thing prettier. It fills the sky with pink and yellow and light."

And then he would sigh.

"It's so pretty, Isa," and would finish like that.

And somehow, as much as that sounded really stupid to his own ears and logic, Isa would somehow understand just how gorgeous was the color of the setting sun.

"I see."

And he would understand anything Ryuuji tried to explain.

The beauty of the grass where they were sit right now and just how green and soft it was.

The colors of the setting sun, the sun that had all the yellows of the world inside it.

The fingers of a child that Isa never met, so pink that they would make his father smile.

And even Ryuuji's "oh-so-blue" hair that Isa only knew it was very soft, much softer than it looked like at first, for he touched it once since Kawara grabbed his hand and made him touches the bangs.

He would understand because, while listening about them, he would be looking at the only true color he could still see.

The red.

Ryuuji Kawara's red eyes.

The red eyes that would sparkle when he talked about sun, or flowers, or the sky, or the fingers of his son, or about the bruises he got at his childhood, or some new experiment or even anything at all.

The red eyes that sometimes would become dull and gloomy when Isa caught Ryuuji all alone. Red eyes that would make Isa feel something stupid and abstruse in his stomach at those moments, red eyes that would instantly come back to their sparkly self when Kawara would notice his younger co-worker.

Isa saw the world through that red.

"…But I think we should go back, sir," he would say, putting back his white coat, because even the most beautiful thing like setting suns and red eyes had to end someday. "They probably know already that we're not there."

Ryuuji would look at Isa for a moment, like he really didn't understood at all what was said to him. Then, he would get up and clean that white coat that would never be really clean at all.

"You're right. It's almost night, eh…"

And then he would stop.

"Ah."

And Isa would stop too.

"What is, sir?"

"One of these days, I'll show you the night sky, Isa," and he would smile and his smile was as red as his eyes. Ryuuji was _red_. "It's especially beautiful from here, you know?"

And as long as he was Isa's only color, everything would make sense.


End file.
